Calling my motherhood “traumatic” is not being overdramatic. In fact, it wasn’t until a recent therapy session that I acknowledge it as such. I am currently seeing two therapists to help me heal and deal with the last 4 years of my life. I have spent a lot of this time feeling isolated, overwhelmed, and helpless. For awhile, I thought I had postpartum depression. But it lasted too long to be that and it never did feel like the right descriptor. I accepted it mostly due to the lack of any other suitable label. Then I started calling my experience ‘Postpartum Rage’. That felt better. Or ‘Postpartum Insanity’ worked well enough too. I wasn’t using these terms casually but I think they come across that way. I tried to reach out to friends and professionals but nothing came of it. I thought I was speaking up, but people didn’t understand the severity, which I guess was because I didn’t communicate it properly. So maybe, calling it ‘trauma' will do something for me or maybe for someone else.
My trauma started during labour. My son was born by c-section. For the first few years I couldn’t say he was “born”. I said that he was taken out of me. I had wanted a vaginal birth, a birth without intervention, and a home birth. We planned for all of that but none of that happened. I knew things wouldn’t go exactly as planned but still…. I had hoped for something better than a c-section. I know I should be grateful that he survived because the alternative is much more traumatic. I know that. But that doesn’t mean there is no trauma in my belly birth. The c-section meant that my baby was taken away from and instead of coming to my chest right after he was born. He went to a station where they gave him oxygen to help him breathe. I remember them holding him up to show us, me from behind the drapery of the operating table, but then I felt the panic as I realized he wasn’t near me but taken away.
He eventually did come to my chest but it can feel like an eternity when the baby you carried for 10 months is away from you for the first time. When he did come to me, I was still on the operating table and filled with drugs that soon made me so nauseous that I had to vomit. So he was extracted away again, placed on his dad. Thankfully someone he knew, but hard for me nonetheless. I was lucky that he breastfed soon thereafter. Often the interventions associated with birth interfere with breastfeeding or with milk production. I had lots of milk. Thank god. I am grateful. Very grateful for that. Thank you. I won that lottery and know that.
That night that he was born, I sat in the bed recovering from surgery while he was held all night by his daddy. I am eternally grateful for my husband to be so caring and willing to hold him all night. I knew to expect nothing less from him. But it was hard that it wasn’t me holding my baby. I felt guilty for the first time, foreshadowing so much more guilt to come. Where did my baby think his mama was that night? But I knew that having narcotics in my system was contraindicated with co-sleeping, for the time being. Twice, in only a few hours, my baby and I were separated.
Some of the consequences of that cesarean directly did cause immediate challenges for me as a mom. Having abdominal surgery meant I the core muscles that are necessary to rise out of bed and feed a crying baby were not there. So every time he cried for milk, I had to painfully sit myself up. I couldn’t feed him laying down like other moms did because that was too painful. Moving at all while sleeping or laying was excruciating. But the worst of it was that my surgery prevented me from getting to my baby as quickly as my hormones wanted me to. It was probably not that much longer, but for a new mom and a new mama brain wanting desperately to take care of her baby, that delay was torture, probably for us both. More guilt.
I barely processed that early trauma. I spent a long time retelling my birth story with tears. Still to this day if I think really deeply about it. But everything else happened so quickly and soon I was home and a new, unexperienced mom, afraid of taking care of this baby. I had no time to process the first trauma. On to the next. No time to write. No time to reflect.
Then maybe through self-fulfilling prophecy or because I actually did recognize what was there, we encountered significant sleep issues that I have always thought stemmed from that belly birth. My long-standing belief is that our little one has been having nightmares since he was an infant. He would often wake suddenly and in panic. I could see terror in his eyes and hear it in his cries. And this was when we were right there, beside him or below him as he slept right on us and with us. There isn’t a lot of scientific evidence for babies having nightmares. But my mama brain thinks they do. Eventually, when he began speaking, he would yell “help me! help me!” in his sleep, I felt affirmed, while my heart wrenched.
My sleep was something I had taken for granted my entire life. I slept well and valued it deeply. But soon it became compromised beyond sanity. As is common for most breastfeeding mothers, I was up every 2 hours nursing for a good hour each time, which meant I was getting sleep in hourly doses. That, in itself, was surprisingly manageable. I had hormones designed to help me and my brain get through the nights. But the sleep challenges went far beyond that norm. It’s hard for me to explain it all because it’s all so overwhelming and still… traumatic actually. In a nutshell, sleep was hell for 3 years. Now, it’s… manageable. The details don’t really matter but I can sum up with this:
He thrives on less sleep than average. Significantly less actually and it has always been that way. As an infant he was getting 10 hrs a day… not 16-18! He’s getting good sleep now but we have been reminded of his lower sleep need as he started junior kindergarten. Everything I read told us that kids would be exhausted after starting school and to recognize this and account for it. Guess what? Not ours. He’s staying awake longer. My theory: we stimulated him more than school does. It was our survival strategy and it worked. School is nothing in comparison to the efforts we put in to exhausting him.
Getting him to sleep (for naps or at night) was hard for 3 years. We did all the so-called things in order to survive because nothing else worked. At 3 years old I was still nursing him to sleep. The only other ways to get him to sleep was movement (carrying/wearing him and walking, driving, the stroller). Getting him to sleep was a full-time fucking job. And we had three adults working on it: Me, his Daddy, and my mom! Nothing got manageable until he dropped all naps. I think he was sleeping too much, despite most expert opinions.
Keeping him asleep was gruelling Still to this day, he wakes up a lot. Sometimes, he wakes up screaming and it sounds like alarm bells in my ears. Two particularly memorable experiences are when he was about 4 months old and he moved from waking every hour, to every 45 min to eventually every 20 minutes. This sleep regression was beyond normal. Waking up every 20 minutes for a couple of weeks is literally torture. Like that’s how some people are tortured. We eventually got back to a normal waking every 2 hours and that lasted till he was 18 months old. Then we night weaned him from my milk but that didn’t help, despite what everyone thought. This kid just didn’t stay asleep and needs lots of comforting techniques to get back to sleep. As independent as he is, he is not able to get himself back to sleep. He has a history of sleep walking and sleep running. Yes, I have caught him running out of his bed into the bathroom screaming in terror, more than once. He often would wake from his naps screaming in panic. Like living through bombs going off with the stress arousal system being invoked often. Too often. I am not using that analogy lightly. Until you have spent years waking up to a child screaming in panic in your ears, you won’t know how much hell that is.
Each of these in and of themselves could be torture and cause serious sleep deprivation. The combination of these was beyond hell. And yes, we did everything we could to fix this problem. Everything except cry-it-out (CIO) techniques, which I would never do and never did do and don’t want to get into that here but will if you message me privately and want support for NOT doing that. Even if we would have done it, I know it wouldn’t not have worked. We have a very persistent child who is very particularly about his needs. Some kids don’t succumb to CIO techniques.
Sleep deprivation is incredibly stressful to the body, brain, mind, and emotions. It played havoc with my wellbeing and my sanity. I was angry — actually rageful at times and had the shortest fuse I have ever known. I have lashed out, said things, and done things that were terrible for a mom to do. Some of them are unforgivable and I hold so much shame. At the time, that shame would reduce me to a deep despair of self loathing, to which the only solution felt like leaving. Yes, leaving: Leaving my life and my role as a mom. At one point, I began to seriously think about divorcing my husband so that we could remain co-parents and then I could have time to myself to recover and survive this motherhood in some fashion. That was the compromise that I came up with after contemplating giving my child up for adoption, which had its pros and cons. It was a serious thought experiment that I engaged in for a few weeks, when I was at my worst. I didn’t think I could be this child’s mom and I said that over and over again to my partner. I thought I was damaging my child more than giving him up for adoption would. I need to stress the seriousness of this point because I feel like so often people around me mistook my cries for help for uncensored exaggerated storytelling of what it was like to be a mom. It was more than that. It was fucking insane to be me in my life. I was dying. I was suffocating in pain and guilt and lack of sleep. And now I am crying as I write that. How did people not know??? And if they did, why did they not care??? I felt so alone and still do and that’s part of why I need to get this out there, for me and for anyone else who feels this or who might feel this in their journey of motherhood.
It’s hard to describe what my mind and brain were like when I was so sleep deprived. One thing that comes to mind, was that I started to get very sensitive, both physically and mentally. Certain images and textures started to make me nauseous and cry. I remember leaning back one night on to the slats of the headboard of the bed. The way my head nestled into the openings caused instance discomfort. I got nauseas. And then I wanted to scratch my head off. Most people won’t understand this, I’m no starting to appreciate. The scary thing was that this was not entirely unfamiliar to me, these sensations. I have felt them in the past, when I had been in almost psychotic states of anxiety. Speaking of which… I also got paranoid. I don’t even know about what, but I did. For those who have been with me during paranoid states of marijuana use, you can probably at least appreciate this from a distance. I also kept saying that I felt like I was dying. I thought I was dying. I thought my body was dying. The sleep deprivation was killing me. And my guess is that it was also killing my husband, who was later diagnosed with kidney cancer. (That’s a whole other trauma we had to experience when we were 3 years into being parents. But for now all it gets is a single line.)
This is what sleep deprivation can do to a person. That’s why it is a form of torture.
If everything else was simple, sleep alone would be enough to cause significant trauma. And if sleep was not a problem maybe everything else would have been manageable. But everything else was not simple. Our child can suck the life out of us. He is and always has been very demanding: physically, intellectually, and emotionally.
Physically, he was precocious. He started walking at 8.5 months. That’s WAY before the early end of average. Jesus Christ, we didn’t even get the luxury of having an immobile baby in all our sleep hell. I said that he walked early because he clocked so many waking hours that he was actually about 2 years old by the time he was only 8 months chronologically. But actually walking was a blessing because at 5.5 months he started grabbing our fingers and walking himself. He demanded this. He would never settle for passive substitutes.
Emotionally he demanded a lot too. He needed me a lot. And he wouldn’t be fooled by rubber soothers or bottles. He needed the real thing. Swing, mobiles, stuffies, security blankets, none of those worked for him either. He needed human contact. Soothing him required deep attention to him and often involved telling him how things worked and what we were doing and why we were doing it. You’d have thought that at 2 months old he was grasping what we were telling him because he seemed so acutely aware and attentive.
Intellectually he demands a lot too. I always thought it was because he knew we knew things and he was going to suck that knowledge right out of us. That he did.
His high needs run deep into the fabric of his existence and after 4 years it has become so clear to me that he needs constant stimulation, both physical and intellectual, and emotional support.
He is exhausting... yet only for us caregivers never for himself. I can’t keep up. Especially not while being sleep deprived. I have tried my fucking hardest to keep up. And when I do — when I am in front of the eight ball, great. But if I don’t keep things fresh, new, and interesting, I quickly find myself behind the 8 ball and then all goes to hell. Trying to stay ahead of the game is exhausting, especially if you are sleep deprived. The other night my husband tried to compliment me on how much creativity I inspired in our child because I always let him paint and on crazy surfaces and generally how I’m ok with a mess. I got really mad at this comment (as I typically do) because I don’t feel like I had a choice. This child demands a box for the sole purpose to think outside of. So I am constantly trying to create a box while also creating the space just outside of it so that I can safely permit his exploration. This was a survival tactic to keep our child stimulated. My mind is constantly having to pay attention to the mess he is making and assess on a moment-to-moment basis, whether this was a mess I could afford to allow, balancing a quick assessment of if I say no, what kind of meltdown can I handle right now and if I say no, what alternative am I prepared to offer and what do I have on hand yet if I say yes, what are the consequences to my life of having to clean it up and whether this mess is one that needs to be cleaned up promptly or if it could wait. I have to be thinking about 5 different directions at once and trying to be 5 steps ahead of him. It’s exhausting.
Having to be “on" like this as a parent is fucking insane. ESPECIALLY GIVEN OUR LEVEL OF SLEEP DEPRIVATION. I simply didn’t have the will power it required to keep myself ready for action. I couldn’t. I absolutely couldn’t. I dug as deep as I could but I found nothing in the tank. And wow did I feel guilty about this too. How could I not outlast my child? How could I not dig deeper? I’m a mom — his mom — I should have been built to handle his needs. What kind of mom couldn’t handle her child’s needs? A terrible one, is what I thought. And my mental state and emotions would spiral down, yet again. I remember one poignant experience where my husband came home from work and I was on the floor crying. I was totally spent. Usually, I had enough energy to last till he got home. Then I would hand off our child and attempt to retreat to the bedroom for 5 mins of sanity. But this particular day, I had nothing left. Just before my husband walked up the street I had put our child in a crib — which he NEVER went in without a HUGE FIGHT — and I left him there crying for the first time. It was less than a minute till my husband came home but I just couldn’t go on. When my husband came home and saw me lying on the floor, I managed to say “please, just go get him. I’m ok.” I wasn’t ok. But I was better than our son who needs constant emotional security from a mom who couldn’t hold herself together. “Just put him down in a safe space and walk away” the advice goes. That never worked for us. He screamed harder and my guilt got worse. But on this particular day, I had to do it and lay myself down, defeated on the floor crying thinking I couldn’t go on. That minute lasted forever and yet I still got no relief. There was no relief from a child who needed me constantly.
I’m crying again now as I write. These are bigger tears. So much more healing to do.
The experiences I encountered in the first 3 years of motherhood were traumatic. It was torture at times. I wanted to run away and escape but I didn't because deep down I am a good mom and I wanted to give my child the best of me. Yet, I had no resources to do this. That battle persisted and the guilt, anger, and self-loathing always outweighed the perception that I was a good enough mom.
I let go of so much in order to find the energy to survive. I cleared away everything superfluous that took away needed. I quit playing ultimate, the sport I had loved for over a decade. I quit staying in shape. I quit writing. I let go of friendships. I gave little energy to my marriage or my career, two elements of my life that were so very important before becoming a mom. I even had little attention left over for my dog, who had been a love of my life, a dog everyone said would never suffer when Mandy became a mom, but who did suffer. I also quit facebook, which seems trivial but I actually love the potential of social media. But I had to let it go.
For a long time I felt too privileged to communicate this and too privileged to acknowledge this as trauma. Who am I to know trauma? A married-to-a-wonderful-partner, 43-year old well-educated, white, European-decent woman from a middle-class family who has never been abused or assaulted. Other people have had it much worse in life and in motherhood, so I don't deserve any sympathy. All of this was just my incompetence of being a mom so I shouldn’t complain. I should get myself together. I should just be better. How hard can it be to care for a child — your own child — and to be a mom? Seriously? Like I know it’s hard but it shouldn’t feel impossible. Evolutionarily that doesn’t make sense. Yet, it felt impossible too often for me.
I suffered. I am still suffering. This suffering isn’t trivial, even though I am privileged in many other ways.
I don’t know the source of this trauma entirely. I blame my c-section a bit yes and I wonder how much that had to do with where we began this journey together. Other circumstances are also responsible for this trauma: My age, my friends being necessarily occupied with their own emerging families, few family members around to help. Thank god for my mom and my partner. They were my saviours. I should have spoken up more. But what more could I have said? When people asked how I was doing, I often said “I’m alive.” or “I’m surviving.”. Those weren’t facetious comments but I think they came across that way. Maybe because I was trying to soften the blow.
And yes, I can also take some responsibility for this. My long-standing coping strategy of running away and taking care of myself didn’t work as a mom. I couldn’t run away from a baby who needed me and I was now the furtherest from independent than I had been since being a child myself. I should have sought out help sooner and although I thought I tried, maybe I should have tried harder. Maybe I should have tried medication but my heart and brain didn’t think that was the answer. I hate that society attempts to use medication to treat what I think are societal problems of the lack fo community support. In many ways, I did the best that I could have with what I had available at the time but it wasn’t enough.
And what about this child? Does he hold any responsibility for being who he is? His intense and insatiable curiosity, physical energy, and emotional needs… a temperament that is hard to handle… especially when sleep deprived [or substitute: which causes sleep deprivation!].
In pursuit of reclaiming my sanity, I have read and searched for meaning, understanding, and help in all of this. What I have found is that some parents are more challenged going in, some circumstances make for a more challenging situation, and that some kids are more challenging than others. Some need more emotional support. Some need more physical and intellectual stimulation. Some are more spirited. Some are relentless. Some push the boundaries. Some make you work really hard at being their parent. Some have lots of special needs. Some need a special kind of parenting. Some kids are more particular and have opinions that are expressed long before they speak. Some don’t sleep. Some don’t sleep because they are too damn curious and have a very active mind. Some little minds outwit and outlast their parents. Some pick up on every little subtle inflection in your voice or body language and your imperfections as a mom are mirrored back to you. Some see the flaws in your parenting logic way earlier than you thought they should and as a parent you find yourself in valid debates with your child long before you thought they could think that critically.
All of this has been my experience.
Sigh.
Today is my birthday. My gift to myself was to write. I have written this story probably 100 times and it never feels right, just like the labels I sought out to describe my experiences. This story is complex and it has silenced me but I need to start to share it despite how uncomfortable it feels to share something that feels like a rough draft. But maybe it will always be a rough draft. Like trying to tell any story of trauma, it doesn’t come out in a nice linear package, at least not at the beginning. Flashbulb experiences rise up in the mind as we attempt to speak in chronology and those flashbulbs take our attention away and divert the story according to what is salient for us, not the listener. The story sounds incomplete and incomprehensible and sometimes inaccurate to outsiders. It’s hard to explain emotions with words.
I thought I wanted people to acknowledge my hell. I wanted to be heard. Maybe I just want it to be said… documented… stamped in time… for whatever reason. Once it’s out there, it’s out of me and into the world. Take it or leave it. As a psychologist though, I find it hard to believe that I’m the only one to feel this. Humans are too generic in many ways. I admit I am curious about these others stories. If you want to share your story, please do. Message/email me or dump it anonymously here (https://forms.gle/sRRTHN7yy85PJo4z8). Part of my healing has happened because I have realized that I am not the only one to suffer these kinds of challenges. Many people have particularly challenging situations.